The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group works to help people whose rights have been violated and investigates cases involving such abuse, as well as assessing the overall human rights situation in Ukraine. The Group also seeks to develop awareness of human rights issues through public events and its various publications

Colleagues of Chief Editor of the Kharkiv newspaper Novy Styl [New Style] Vasyl Klymentyev , who disappeared on 11 August, have been carrying out their own investigation.

Petro Matviyenko, Deputy Editor, believes that Klymentyev, together with a driver whom the police do not consider disappeared, but who is wanted to help with the investigation, could have disappeared earlier than 11 August.

Matviyenko and Klymentyev went together with this driver to view the estate of the Kharkiv region’s chief tax official near the Pechenizke Reservoir. Matviyenko believes that it was his presence that prevented the disappearance and / or murder then, and sees the key figure in this to be the driver.

He says that the investigators have established that the same driver came to Klymentyev on 10 August, and asserts that it was after this meeting that Klymentyev told his colleagues that on 11 August he would have a very interesting video cassette about the Head of the Regional Tax Inspectorate. This was the day that the journalist disappeared, and his Novy Styl colleagues believe that the driver is the key to solving his disappearance.

Matviyenko also points out that the alarm system to Klymentyev’s house twice went off after his disappearance, although the police found nothing suspicious when they arrived. However Klymentyev’s partner, when she arrived the next morning, found the door closed differently.

He believes that the people who abducted Klymentyev used his keys. He is convinced that they have links with the police since “they were able to trick the alarm system”. That is, it worked, they hid, and then when nobody put the house back on the alarm system, they were free to do what they wanted. He believes that they could have stolen important documents. The police had previously reported finding money and signed notes from the journalist’s debtors. (Earlier this week the Minister of Internal Affairs said that another pistol had been found, but himself suggested that it had been planted there, since it was not there when the police first searched – translator).